It has been practiced to employ a tension structure to cover a large space such as a gymnasium, exhibiting pavilion, assembly hall, plant, cooling tower, or large roof and/or wall the examples of which are disclosed in "Tension Structures and Space Frames" by Y. Yokoo et al published in 1972 by the Architectural Institute of Japan.
In constructing such a large space structure, roof or wall, it has been customary to install panel members over a braced grid or network structure comprising tension members such as wire ropes, steel frames, etc. Sometimes, a membrane may be stretched over such base frames as listed above.
However, aerial operation and/or a large scaffold have been necessary to erect such a braced grid or network structure which resulted in the drawbacks in safety and efficiency regarding the aerial operation and expensiveness regarding the necessary scaffold. Further, as touched upon above, an additional operation of installing panels or stretching a membrane is required after the erection of the frame structure.
Also, for almost the same purpose as that of the structures touched upon above, a pneumatic membrane structure has been employed such as disclosed in "Pneumatic Structures" by Frei Otto in Vol. 1 of "Tensil Structures" published by Ullstein Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt/M-Berlin. The erection of such a pneumatic structure requires neither a large scaffold nor an additional operation for installing panels or the like except for supplying pneumatic pressure to keep the pressure difference between the inside and the outside of the structure. The materials employed in the pneumatic structure are generally canvas, woven synthetic fibers or woven glass fibers coated with synthetic resin and they are used as membranes and such membrane is stretched to form a desired shape by applying pneumatic pressure and maintaining the internal pressure above the atmospheric pressure. The woven materials referred to above are generally combustible or inflammable and the glass fibers are easily fusible under high temperature. Therefore, the materials conventionally used for the pneumatic membrane structures are inferior against fire or flying sparks. Also, they deteriorate under natural conditions, such as exposure to ultraviolet rays and, the materials made of or comprising high polymers are subject to so-called "creep", and so they are not suitable for maintaining stable shapes and mechanical properties. Therefore, the conventional pneumatic structures have never been suitable for permanent or semi-permanent constructions.
Accordingly, it has been desired to have a structure which is free from the above drawbacks.